Janko Lozar

slovène

[The jet bores like a silverfish . . .]

The jet bores like a silverfish through volumes of cloud –
clouds that will keep no record of where we have passed,
nor the sea’s mirror, nor the coral busy with its own
culture; they aren’t doors of dissolving stone,
but pages in a damp culture that come apart.
So a hole in their parchment opens, and suddenly, in a vast
dereliction of sunlight, there’s that island known
to the traveller Trollope, and the fellow traveller Froude,
for making nothing. Not even a people. The jet’s shadow
ripples over green jungles as steadily as a minnow
through seaweed. Our sunlight is shared by Rome
and your white paper, Joseph. Here, as everywhere else,
it is the same age. In cities, in settlements of mud,
light has never had epochs. Near the rusty harbor
around Port of Spain bright suburbs fade into words –
Maraval, Diego Martin – the highways long as regrets,
and steeples so tiny you couldn’t hear their bells,
nor the sharp exclamations of whitewashed minarets
from green villages. The lowering window resounds
over pages of earth, the canefields set in stanzas.
Skimming over an ocher swamp like a fast cloud of egrets
are nouns that find their branches as simply as birds.
It comes too fast, this shelving sense of home –
canes rushing the wing, a fence; a world that still stands as
the trundling tires keep shaking and shaking the heart.

© by Carl Hanser Verlag München Wien 2001
Extrait de: Mittsommer / Midsummer
München Wien: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2001
ISBN: 3-446-20102-5
Production audio: 2001 M.Mechner, literaturWERKstatt berlin

[Letalo vrta kot srebrna ribica ...]

Letalo vrta kot srebrna ribica skoz morje oblakov –
oblaki, ki ne bodo beležili naših mimohodov,
niti zrcalo morja, niti korale, zazrte v svojo
rast; niso vrata topečega se kamna,
temveč listi papirja v vlažni kulturi, ki razpadajo.
Tako se odpre luknja v pergamentu in nenadoma se
v veliki oseki sončnih žarkov pojavi tisti otok, poznan
popotniku Trollopu in sopotniku Froudu po tem,
da ne daje ničesar. Niti ljudstev ne. Senca letala
valovi prek zelenih džungel mirno kot pezdirk
skoz morske trave. Naše sončne žarke si delita Rim
in tvoj bel papir, Joseph. Tukaj, kot povsod drugod,
je ista doba. V mestih, v naselbinah blata,
svetloba nikoli ni imela svojih razdobij. Blizu rjavečega pristanišča
okrog Port of Spain žareča predmestja izginjajo v besede –
Maraval, Diego Martin – avtoceste dolge kot obžalovanja,
in zvoniki tako drobni, da ne slišiš njihovih zvonov,
niti ostrih vzklikov z apnom obeljenih minaretov
iz zelenih vasi. Spuščajoče se okno odmeva
po straneh zemlje, polja trstja zahajajo v kitice.
Nad okrasnim barjem drsijo kot bliskovit oblak belih čapelj
samostalniki, ki si poiščejo veje s preprostostjo ptic.
Prenaglo prihaja, ta položni občutek doma –
trstje poganja krilca, ograja; svet, ki še vedno stoji, medtem ko
kotaleča se kolesa nenehno stresajo in stresajo srce.

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